This thesis examines how service design tools can support the process of prototyping a personalized service.
The research was done in the context of car-sharing, where a case study, in collaboration with Volvo Cars, was used to explore several prototyping methods. The case resulted in a recommendation for a new personalized car-sharing service for Volvo.
Through the case study, several prototyping methods were examined in a practical context of an industry relevant challenge. Four iterations of prototyping helped to find out the advantages and disadvantages of certain methods when designing for a personalized service.
This study reveals that prototyping personalized services can best be done by using direct-experience prototypes, as they showed to have the highest potential when testing the added value of personalization. It also shows that personalizing a prototype itself adds great value to a user test, but extra time and effort needs to be invested when building and testing such prototypes. Another conclusion is that it is important to test a whole service journey when testing a personalized service, instead of isolating a single touchpoint.